A Rhetoric analysis of natural and technical approach

     In my text Rhetoric and Human Consciousness, I read about the topics of rhetoric from the perspective of rhetorical thinkers. In the Rhetoric chapter titled "Context, Function, and Media," I learned some information on technology and it's use of rhetoric to the world. Well, I'm going to make a careful examination of this chapter and the thinkers theories within the text.
     In chapter 11 of Rhetoric, the chapter starts off by discussing the thinker on technology Marshall McLuhan when it states, "Marshall McLuhan, who built his theory around modern technology and argued in typical overstatement that " the medium is the message." His radical theory about how form overwhelms substance is as relevant to cyberspace as it is to television"(Smith 301). From my experience with technology, I can definitely agree that form is a vital ingredient to modern technology today. Through out the chapter, there are many thinkers who come up with many deep examinations of technology such as the internet and such that include form, and affect our perception on how to deal with the natural world they inhabit. Another thinker brought up in this book is Ivorson A. Richards and he "sought to match word (signs) with objects (referents) by pointing out how context, past experience, and cultural interference can corrupt or clarify meaning"(302). I've discovered this trouble myself when reading books and getting confused myself on the subject and meaning of the text and being unable to not distinguish between the two. I glad such people as Richards were trying to approach the topic in a logical way in order to help others understand context and form more clearly.
In the section of the book that focuses on the two theorists Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, I read that they were trying to change the way knowledge and how to present that knowledge for people to listen, As the text states, "Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca were interested in bridging the chasm between logic and rhetoric that had been created by Ramus and Descartes"(Smith 309). So the two men were expanding on the philosophies of past thinkers in order to expand on their hypothesis' of rhetoric. I can assume that they were not the only one's to practice this method. Many people have done this sort of compare and contrast with people who share their approach to life. The last philosopher I will talk about is Stephen Toulmin, and in the text it states that he "converted argumentation into a rhetorical process and in so doing strengthened the rhetorical arsenal upon which we can rely to reconstruct our lives and our world"(311). Argument was the main area of Toulmin's approach to rhetoric, and I guess he was trying to put serious effort into explaining the form of rhetoric's use of argument. In my time during my study of environmental rhetoric class, I found that I was being instructed on not to merely present a speech on environment, but to also use logic responsibly and present my argument in a logical way that possesses a structure that will give my argument some credibility. I hope that I still remember to use that information again in the future.